twitterati

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just heard on MSNBC, "twitterati."  Said by female afternoon news
> host.  It's probably been around for a while and it's certainly not
> surprising.

It's been around since Dec. 2006 at least:

---
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2006/12/johnson_v_eno.html
Russell Davies, Dec. 4, 2006
I've just got back from the Steven Johnson and Brian Eno thing at the ICA. It'll
be a very blogged event, the London twitterati were all there, and this'll be
the picture everyone'll have.
---

But it goes back more than a decade before that in non-Twitter contexts:

---
Toronto Star, May 31, 1995 (Factiva)
Choreographer Brian Macdonald has found time and space to pack the action with
some hoofing spectaculars, the finales to each of three sizzling acts full of
intricately designed movement. And it's essential to note a number of
delightful contributions in this vein by Cara Hunter as Maisie, one of a number
of teenage twitterati attending a finishing school in Nice (but all they want to
bring to an end is their virginity and lack of wealth, in that order).
---
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.health.alternative/msg/ccf4bd7f34776920
misc.health.alternative, Feb. 14, 1996
Ah, chaos theory!  The latest buzz-word and cultural phenomenon among the
twitterati, which we could have predicted coming when we saw it mentioned in a
Spielberg dinosaur fantasy <sigh>.
---


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org